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Donatus

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Dictionaries
Charles Buck Dictionary
• Donatists
Heresies of the Church
• Donatists
Dictionary of Early Christian Biography
• Tichonius, an African Donatist
• Primianus, Donatist Bishop of Carthage
• Petilianus, a Donatist Bishop
•   (only first 3 shown)
1910 New Catholic Dictionary
• Donatists
Webster Dictionary
• Donatistic
• Donatist
Encyclopedias
1911 Encyclopedia Britannica
• Donatists
McClintock and Strong's Bible Encyclopedia
• Donatists
The Nuttall Encyclopedia
• Donatists
The Catholic Encyclopedia
• Donatists

A sect in N. Africa, founded by Donatus, bishop of Carthage, in the 4th century, that separated from the rest of the Church and formed itself into an exclusive community, with bishops and congregations of its own, on the ground that no one was entitled to be a member of Christ's body, or an overseer of Christ's flock, who was not of divine election, and that in the face of an attempt, backed by the Emperor Constantine, to thrust a bishop on the Church at Carthage, consecrated by an authority that had betrayed and sold the Church to the world; the members of it were subject to cruel persecutions in which they gloried, and were annihilated by the Saracens in the 7th century.